


wake up your saints

by Verbyna



Series: rifle, scissor, stone [6]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Blood and Injury, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Gallows Humor, Guns, Jack "when will someone literally end me" Zimmermann, M/M, Possessive Behavior, Power Imbalance, dirty deeds done dirt cheap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 02:44:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11221635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna
Summary: “Zimms. My boy. If you’re gonna claim the bounty, you better do it before it’s voided. I’m like ten minutes from bleeding out.”





	wake up your saints

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jedusaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedusaur/gifts).



> title from the national, beta by jedusaur <3
> 
> this installment will make a lot more sense if you've read the previous one and/or think of them as parts 1 & 2 of the same arc. the... abattoir arc? i'm not as sorry as i should be, but my tumblr url is still @soundslikepenance

Jack isn’t running away. He just sticks around in Providence after Eric is debriefed and sent back to Boston HQ, ignores every call from Shitty that’s not related to reports, and goes to see Mashkov down in Medical whenever he’s not training.

When he’s running away, he takes West Coast contracts. That’s not what this is.

No one is telling him anything about what happened with Eric and Kent. He’d gone into that gas station ready to free Eric from some cupboard, rescue him from whatever Kent was doing to settle the score between himself and Jack, but instead he found Eric well-fed and armed and watching him strangely.

And then Eric left to be debriefed by George, and then he left for Boston in the backseat of the trauma surgeon’s car as soon as Mashkov was stable, and he wasn’t looking at Jack at all.

He didn’t say a single word to Jack after, “He’s gone.”

 

+

 

It’s three in the morning and the air is sticky with heat. Jack’s sitting on a stack of pallets at the bottom of a delivery ramp at the Abattoir’s warehouse, oiling his guns. Mashkov, always a night owl, just finished beating him at poker and sent him away from Medical; the heat and the thought of his windowless bedroom at the main compound chased off the last of Jack’s sleep.

He’s reassembling the second gun when he hears a small dripping sound at the top of the ramp, then the clatter of something plastic hitting the industrial concrete floor.

“Shit,” says Kent weakly. His phone clatters all the way down to Jack’s pallets, landing face up, with a number Jack recognizes as the one George is currently using dialed on the screen.

“Fuck,” says Jack, and reaches down to end the call. “What the fuck, Kenny?”

Jack can’t see him yet, but he can hear Kent’s deranged laughter echoing off the walls just fine. It’s like a wind-up toy running out of batteries, and Jack’s on his feet before he knows what he’s doing, a gun in each hand.

“Zimms. My boy. If you’re gonna claim the bounty, you better do it before it’s voided. I’m like ten minutes from bleeding out.”

Jack doesn’t lower his guns; Kent’s grabbed him from HQ and the Abattoir before. He does, however, type out George’s number on his own burner before putting it back on the pallets and making his way up toward Kent’s voice.

“I’m not going to claim a bounty I’ve been trying to pay out,” Jack argues stupidly. He’s halfway to the top when he sees Kent falling down to his knees, so he speeds up. Not a lot. This could still be a trap.

“I’m a little stabbed,” Kent explains, voice fainter, more obviously pained. The light from inside is glinting sharply off the dark smears around him. His pants have taken on the dull sheen of blood on black fabric already, but when Jack looks back at his phone, he can’t make himself call George and tell her what’s going on.

And he definitely can’t make himself walk away from Kent when one of them is bleeding. Not even to follow protocol, to kill him or to help him.

“Here we are again,” Kent says. “Are you going to let me die this time?”

“No,” Jack says, even though he isn’t sure he won’t. “Who stabbed you?”

Kent shrugs. “Bounty hunter. Got lucky.”

“You killed ‘em?”

“I didn’t lead him to George’s door, asshole. _Fuck,_ that hurts. But what a view.”

The leer would be more credible if Kent didn’t tip forward right after he finishes talking. Jack rushes to catch him, puts the guns down then helps Kent to lie down with his bright hair fanned across Jack’s lap. The weight of him is as familiar as the smell of his fancy face cream, the whiff of copper and bleach that he can never wash out. Jack rests a hand on Kent’s chest, the other on his collarbone, two fingers on his weak pulse.

“What a view,” he whispers, and resists the urge to close Kent’s eyes.

He could say goodbye now. This could be the end of them, but it’s his own fucking fault that Kent’s being hunted down. Like his mom told him, what you break is what you get. He locked Kent in a closet and swallowed a bottle of pills once, and Kent lost his mind worrying for him, starved for days while Jack was waking up and keeping quiet.

He doesn’t know who he’d be if Kent wasn’t there to dig it out of him. Nothing, maybe. An empty outline of a predator with his mother’s big, cold eyes.

“Tell me about Eric,” Kent breathes out. “Have you figured it out yet?”

Jack blinks; his hand fists around Kent’s black T-shirt, over his sternum. Kent can’t keep his eyes open anymore, and for all that he wanted to close them just moments ago, Jack suddenly wants to see them again. He wants to talk like they used to before they got twisted. He’s running out of time.

“Why didn’t you kill him?” he asks helplessly.

“Because he’s yours,” Kent tells him. And oh, _oh._ How simple everything is. How fucking terrible and simple things are when Kent explains them.

Jack isn’t sure he’ll make the call even as he lays Kent’s head on the ground and follows the rivulets of blood down the ramp. He wants to keep walking until he can’t walk anymore, he wants Kent to use the last of his strength to pick up one of the guns and take Jack with him; he wants Kent to live, but he hates living like this. His steps are unhurried, gravity doing most of the work, every second strange and hyperreal.

He stops next to the pallets and stares at his phone for a long moment. Then he picks it up and makes the call, because he can’t leave Kent for dead twice. Not if he wants a snowflake’s chance in hell of not ruining Eric, too.

Kent is how Jack stays human.

And he’s Jack’s responsibility.

 

+

 

He doesn’t talk to George before leaving the Abattoir. If anyone asked, which Shitty and Larissa will definitely do, he’ll say he got out for the sake of plausible deniability. Boston and Rhodey may be part of the same organization, but Jack can’t implicate them in the Abattoir’s decisions on Kent. If George takes Kent in despite the burn notice, Jack can’t be anywhere near it.

But before he talks to them, the same gravity drags him to Eric’s door. His print unlocks it, because Eric is his rookie. He tells himself he’ll just look in on Eric; it’s three in the morning, Eric is probably asleep, and Jack’s clothes are still spattered with Kent’s blood. He looks down and there’s one of Kent’s hairs, light and heavy as a mark on his jeans.

He opens the door. Eric stares at him from the bed, very much awake. He looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks.

“Training?” he asks, making to get up.

“No,” Jack says. There is a pause where he could say a lot of things, but what comes out is, “Can I sit with you? Just for a minute. I had a weird fucking night.”

“Um. Come in,” Eric says. It doesn’t sound like an invitation, more like an acknowledgment that he can’t stop Jack, but Jack will take it.

He closes the door and sits on the edge of the bed; Eric scoots backward until he’s curled up against the headboard, watching Jack warily. _Mine,_ Jack thinks, and hates himself for it.

“Lie down,” says Eric. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”

“I’ll mess up your sheets.”

“Just lie down, you’re making me nervous.” There are four knives on the nightstand, and Jack thinks about that, lets himself think of Eric as someone who could gut him, as he stretches out gingerly. He doesn’t want to talk, really. He doesn’t think he can.

Mercifully, Eric doesn’t make him spill anything he’s not ready to say. He just turns the A/C up, pulls the sheets over Jack, and tips his head back against the wall to avoid eye contact.

Jack falls asleep like that, between one breath and the next, Eric’s cold hand a comforting weight on his clammy forehead.


End file.
